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Fellowship of Saints and Sinners

This is a poem I wrote this morning. May your day be full of hope: Daybreak When the sound is birds, and the harvest of night is gathering into morning’s first blooms, the silent prayer of the universe for every living, beating thing stretches itself out across the plain of my heart in hope. Maybe…

Faith turned over to the side that doesn’t capture the light: the underbelly of trust in God—or is it distrust?—so often not shown.  At first glance, Barbara Brown Taylor’s latest book, Learning To Walk in the Dark, seems an exercise in gently poking at faith, like the study of some awkward specimen turned over under…

And what the dead had no speech for, when living They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond with the language of the living. —T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets Last night at dinner we prayed for those who died in the tornadoes here in the South and for…

Since it’s been a while since our last mental health break…today’s feature is the choral ensemble “Stile Antico” singing Thomas Tallis’ “Miserere nostri.” A friend introduced me to the group, and I’m so glad she did. Now they accompany me often in the car. En route to work sites. Picking up the kiddos from school.…

16 When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll…

For the last three years I’ve had the privilege of participating in an annual ecumenical and interracial Good Friday service, “Women’s Views of the Cross.” This year I’ll preach from the perspective of Mary, the mother of James and Joses, who appears for the first time in the Gospel of Mark as a witness to…

Sex. Money. Power. Corruption. Controversy. Scandal. Since the 1980’s Catholic News Service reporter John Thavis has been covering all of it and more—not from a post in Las Vegas or the nation’s Capitol but from (of all places) the Vatican. Which may explain why Thavis prefaces his New York Times bestseller The Vatican Diaries (Penguin)…

In an effort to infuse this often somber season of Lent with a little humor and motivational pizzazz, one Episcopalian priest in Massachusetts has invented “Lent Madness.” Four years ago Rev. Tim Schenck started the initiative, which pits some 32 saints in a basketball-type bracket squaring off as rivals for the coveted “Golden Halo.” (I’d…

April Fool’s Day seems a fitting day to review what happened last week, when, within just two days of announcing its decision to hire gays in recognized same-sex marriages, World Vision reversed its decision. An official statement from World Vision president Richard Stearns communicated “heartbreak”— “over the pain and confusion we have caused many of…

Each week in hospice a team of doctors, nurses, chaplains and social workers meets to discuss every patient in their care. Usually the meeting starts with a few moments of silence remembering those who have died in the preceding days, followed by a short meditation from the chaplain. Yesterday a colleague read this poem, “Wild…
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